Dude, You Totaled My Car.
Or How The Real Housewives taught me dignity.
When I was twenty-six, I bought my mom a vintage BMW station wagon from a shady used car dealership. I threw down a small deposit, and laughed at all the forms I was signing, not caring at all what any of them meant. I was young enough to believe that money would always come in and I was proud of myself for being able to buy her a car. She was about to move to Santa Fe, and I was going to become a rich and famous writer in Los Angeles.
A year later, my mother moved back home to Los Angeles, to take care of me after my car accident. I didn’t drive, as a result of my injuries and PTSD, and my mother drove me around in my mint green Prius to my various appointments and meetings. I would sit in the backseat, jumping every once in awhile, like a perpetually scared infant. This went on for so many years. I almost don’t want to write how many years. Six, six years of being driven around by my own mother. All the way, from my late twenties, deep into my thirties.
But in those early years of being chauffeured, a friend of a close friend, an actor named Henry, asked if he could borrow our spare BMW, while he was visiting LA. Since he was a friend of my dearest friend, I said yes. I got the car tuned up, since we hadn’t driven it in months. It cost about 1200 dollars, but I didn’t resent Henry for that. After all, I’d have to get it tuned up eventually. And I assumed, like any of my friends who had borrowed my car in the past, he would give me a small sum of money in exchange for getting to use it. Especially since we didn’t know each other that well. Common sense.
So, I lent Henry my mother’s car, and didn’t think anything of it. Until I heard, from our mutual friend, that Henry had taken it on a road trip up the California Coast. Huh. Probably would have been thoughtful to check with me first, I thought. This was a vintage BMW, not made for extensive road trips.
But when Henry came back from his trip, and apologized to me, I assured him it was fine. Not to worry. He told me he felt terrible. I believed him. He told me that he was so grateful to get to use the car, that he was going to get me a bottle of wine.
He thought a bottle of wine was going an appropriate exchange? I don’t even drink. I was starting to feel unsettled, annoyed. How uncomfortable, to nearly have a problem with somebody.
Years later, the BMW destroyed, I was in a rental house in Boston, watching my first Real Housewives franchise, The Real Housewives of New York. I was being introduced to a cast member named Bethenny Frankel. She was a private chef, living in a condo on the Upper East Side. Bethenny had both a sense of humor about herself, and an intense belief in her future success.
Looking straight into the camera, during a talking head interview, Bethenny is direct, “I am going to be a massive success.”
And when LuAnn tells Bethenny that she doesn’t go to fashion shows, Bethenny turns to LuAnn, and yells over the din of the room “I’m telling you to your face: I don’t like you, I don’t trust you, and I think you’re a snake… Yes. That’s what I really think.”
During Henry’s short stay in Los Angeles, our friends went on a vacation to Ojai, and Henry and his girlfriend were coming to meet us there. When we arrived to the Airbnb, I noticed that Henry had driven the BMW. I was confused. Hadn’t I asked him not to take it on long trips?
But what was I going to do, confront him? How would that affect the trip? The comfort of our friends?
However, Henry didn’t seem to worry about my comfort. When I changed the music during the party that night, he scolded me, telling me to “Mind the queue”. I was too shocked to even respond. Wasn’t he borrowing my car? Was this really happening?
Everyone proceeded to get drunk, except of course, for me. At a certain point, a friend of mine broke a glass, and blamed it on me, saying I bumped into her. Suddenly, as a joke, everyone, including Henry started chanting “Fuck Carolina! Fuck Carolina!” Sober, I was so jarred, that I simply walked out of the room. One of my friends laughed, drunk, “Oh, she’s scared!” She yelled.
The next morning, Henry asked if he could borrow the car for a longer period of time. He was extending his stay in Los Angeles, for a total of a month. I struggled to respond, but meekly said “Sure. My monthly car payment is around 400 dollars. So, do you think you could give me 250?” This took every ounce of courage I had. I simply didn’t have a lot of experience sticking up for myself. These were uncharted waters. Henry looked back at me quizzically, and smugly smiled, “Sure” he said.
I couldn’t believe my strength. It seems ridiculous now, but I was really proud of myself.
The next time I saw Henry, he gave me two hundred dollars. He told me the ATM wouldn’t let him take out more. He’d give me the fifty some other time.
However, the next time I saw him after that, at a Halloween party, there was no mention of the missing fifty. But he did manage to tell me, that I looked really tired.
Bethenny screams at LuAnn at Dorinda’s house in the Berkshires. “YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE. YOU FUCK EVERYONE! And you pretend that you don’t. I don’t care if you’re the biggest whore in the Macy’s Window. But you pretend that you’re appropriate. I’m calling you out on your shit, because nobody besides me has the balls to do it!”
When Henry finally dropped the car back, he parked it in the driveway, and tossed a cheap bottle of wine in the front seat. Failing to knock on our door, he shot me a text, letting me know he had dropped it off. When my mother turned the car on that night, all of the service lights went on. Even the oil change light. We took the car to our trusted mechanic, who had been servicing it since we had purchased it, nearly four years ago. He showed us a pound of rocks stuck under the baseboard of the car. He told us someone must have gone drag racing in it. The repairs would be about 2400 dollars. I was confused, we had just gotten it serviced, literally a month ago. He told us the car wasn’t even worth it anymore. That we could sell it to him for parts, for 1000 dollars. There didn’t seem to be an option.
In tears, I confronted our mutual friend, the person who had introduced me to Henry. I wanted him to stick up for me. Instead, he claimed that I should have been more diligent, more communicative to Henry. I should have explicitly told him not to go joy-riding in my car.
During a reunion, Bethenny turns to Ramona Singer, “Shut your fucking mouth, cuz you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
For the sake of all my friendships, I decided to still be cordial to Henry. I didn’t want to be a difficult woman. Standing up for myself, that would be hysterical.
Women are raised to believe that kindness will get us everywhere in life. We can make people behave! All we have to do is be nice to them. If I was pleasant, and agreeable, I would get that in return. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, I really believed this. And I was going to enter a truce with Henry, one that he wasn’t privy to, but one that would ensure that I could keep all my friendships, and not rock any boats.
So, when we all went out to dinner at a swanky Mexican restaurant, I was determined to be pleasant. After nearly thirty years of practice, I didn’t think twice about it. As we were splitting the bill, at the end of the night, we all discussed what we should put down. I was raised to tip generously, and planned on doing so. But, I also didn’t drink, unlike everyone else at the table, and I planned on accounting for that when estimating my portion of the bill. “I think I’ll put down twenty-nine” I said. Henry looked up at me, across our table of ten or so friends. “Why don’t you just put down thirty?” He said.
I was too stunned to respond. I wanted someone to stand up for me. I wanted our mutual friend to tell him off. I wanted one of my friends, to be unpleasant on my behalf, because I couldn’t do it myself.
I didn’t know it then, but I was to lose every friendship at that table. In retrospect, I believe they were over in that moment.
After Sonja Morgan launches her wine Tipsy Girl, trying to ride the coattails of Bethenny’s success with her Margarita Mix, SkinnyGirl, Bethenny tells her, “I put my neck out for you, brought you into my world, into my brand summit. I’m completely insulted. And I don’t want anything to do with you. I think you’re a fraud. Cuz you come up with six fake businesses and nobody buys any of it, it’s all bullshit… I don’t believe any of it. Nobody believes any of it.”
I didn’t think I should tell this story. How rude, to expose someone for bad behavior? I’m allowed to openly confess any of my own sins, but the sins of another, the sins of a man? Those are to be protected.
People usually speak only of regret when it comes to missed opportunities, or God forbid, hurting someone. Of course, unintentionally hurting someone, or worse, intentionally hurting them, should earn our regret.
But I rarely hear regret for those times we unintentionally hurt ourselves. Those times we unknowingly let ourselves down. Those missed opportunities, to scream at someone.
A couple of years after the fact, after hearing through the grapevine how upset I was, Henry texted me, asking me to talk. I responded, thanking him for reaching out but told him I was busy, I’d reach out some other time. I never did. I always thought that if we did meet, I’d walk him through the version of events, chronologically. But I’m not sure that would help. Writing them out here, for myself, reminds me that the only person who needs to believe I was wronged, is me. My opinion, on how I was treated, matters most.
At a restaurant in the Hamptons, Bethenny stares across the table at LuAnn. “On what scale do you think I care about your opinion of me? Zero to ten? Where do you think I fall in?”
Shameless. That’s what these Real Housewives were. They were single women, in their 60s, trying to pick up men at bars. They were screaming at each other in restaurants. They were dressing up as Britney Spears from the Oops I Did It Again Music Video. They were caricatures.
But they would never, ever let you speak ill of them, and get away with it. They wouldn’t let you hurt them, without vicious, over the top retaliation. They took pride in themselves, in ways that I could not.
I imagined the Bravo Version of that dinner at the Mexican Restaurant. Henry, telling me to put one more dollar down on the check, all while owing me fifty, all while having totaled my car.
In this imagined version, I stand up. I throw my chair down. “Really?” I ask him, “Why don’t you pay, since you owe me fifty fucking dollars.” I scream at my friends, for doing nothing, for proving just how little I mattered to them. I tell them all, it’s over. Sure, go ahead, write me off as hysterical. But I would at least go home, sitting in the back of some car, knowing that I was shameless when it came to sticking up for myself, that I would always be willing to risk looking ridiculous, in an effort to be protected.
To fix the car, the car H picked up from our mechanic in perfect condition, would have been close to 6k. We sold it for parts for 400. Even now your memory is softening the blow! - Mom